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The uniform net capital rule is a rule created by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") in 1975 to regulate directly the ability of broker-dealers to meet their financial obligations to customers and other creditors.〔See Section 2 below.〕 Broker-dealers are companies that trade securities for customers (i.e., brokers) and for their own accounts (i.e., dealers).〔See Section 2.1 below.〕 The rule requires those firms to value their securities at market prices and to apply to those values a haircut (i.e., a discount) based on each security's risk characteristics.〔(General Accounting Office (“GAO”) Report, “Risk-Based Capital, Regulatory and Industry Approaches to Capital and Risk,” GAO/GGD-98-153 ), July 1998 ("GAO Risk-Based Capital Report") at 132, fn. 11.〕 The haircut values of securities are used to compute the liquidation value of a broker-dealer's assets to determine whether the broker-dealer holds enough liquid assets to pay all its non-subordinated liabilities and to still retain a "cushion" of required liquid assets (i.e., the "net capital" requirement) to ensure payment of all obligations owed to customers if there is a delay in liquidating the assets.〔See Section 3.1 below〕 On April 28, 2004, the SEC voted unanimously to permit the largest broker-dealers (i.e., those with "tentative net capital" of more than $5 billion) to apply for exemptions from this established "haircut" method.〔See Section 5 below and, for details of the SEC action, (GAO, Major Rule Report: Alternative Net Capital Requirements for Broker-Dealers That Are Part of Consolidated Supervised Entities ) (B-294184), June 25, 2004. ("GAO Major Rule Report")〕 Upon receiving SEC approval, those firms were permitted to use mathematical models to compute the haircuts on their securities based on international standards used by commercial banks.〔See Section 5 below.〕 Since 2008, many commentators on the financial crisis of 2007-2009 have identified the 2004 rule change as an important cause of the crisis on the basis it permitted certain large investment banks (i.e., Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley) to increase dramatically their leverage (i.e., the ratio of their debt or assets to their equity).〔See Section 1.1 below.〕 Financial reports filed by those companies show an increase in their leverage ratios from 2004 through 2007 (and into 2008), but financial reports filed by the same companies before 2004 show higher reported leverage ratios for four of the five firms in years before 2004.〔See Section 1.1 and 7.2 below. The leverage ratios for the five companies (A) from 1993 to 2002 are found in note 95 below and (B) from 2003 to 2007 in note 93 below. Notes 95-97 below contain information on the fiscal quarter end leverage reported by these firms in various Form 10-Q Reports for fiscal quarters in the 1990s and after 2004.〕 The 2004 rule change remains in effect. The companies that received SEC approval to use its haircut computation method continue to use that method, subject to modifications that became effective January 1, 2010.〔See Section 1.3 below. As explained there, (1) the assets of Lehman Brothers Inc were acquired by Barclays Capital, and the SEC granted Barclays approval, with restrictions, to continue using the new method for the operation of that business and (2) the Bear Stearns broker-dealer authorized to use the new method continued to use that method as part of JP Morgan Chase.〕 ==The net capital rule and the financial crisis of 2007-2009== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Net capital rule」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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